


Against All Odds

by backtoblack101



Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: 1950s, Domestic, F/F, Future Fic, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 13:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5745190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/backtoblack101/pseuds/backtoblack101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carol and Therese from Rindy's perspective. Set a few years after the end of the book/film.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Against All Odds

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to write something about Carol and Therese since the second I picked up The Price of Salt for the first time but I never felt I could get inside Therese's head in the same way Highsmith did, nor did I feel like I could really do Carol justice either, but I love the characters so much so this is my compromise.

Against all odds Rindy loved her mother dearly.

 Her grandmother had spent years trying to convince her not to and her father, well her father had never directly attempted to poison her, but he’d never told his mother to stop either when he’d overheard her explaining to Rindy how _sick_ her mother was, how _unsafe_ she was to be around. He did speak ill of her Aunt Abby though and, even at just thirteen, Rindy knew that to speak ill of her Aunt Abby was one in the same with speaking ill of her mother – according to her grandmother they had the same sickness inside them after all. Still though in spite of all this, and in spite of the mere weekend she got to spend with her mother every month, she never found it in her to hate.

Of course there were moments.

Moments when she’d misbehaved and her mother had taken her dolls off her, or withheld desert after dinner, when Rindy really had considered hating her. Then of course her mother would tuck her in, read her a story, and kiss her on the forehead that night and all that hate would melt away as instantaneously as it had swelled up inside her in the first place.

She liked that she had her own room in her mothers’ house as well, even though she wasn’t there very often and really could have gotten by without one. Of course when she’d first started spending weekends there her mother had told her the room ordinarily belonged to Therese, the woman that lived with her, and that Therese was simply more than happy to sleep on the couch whenever Rindy was over.

When she was six Rindy had discovered that to be a lie.

There was of course items of Therese’s scattered throughout the room and for a while that had been enough to convince Rindy she was in fact bunking in Therese’s bed. Then one weekend Rindy had snuck into her mothers’ room while dinner was being prepared – her intention had been to find some lipstick to wear to the dinner table, just like her mother often wore – and she’d opened the wardrobe to find only half the clothes hung there belonged to her mother. The rest she’d seen on Therese at some point or another. She even saw the long jacket Therese had wrapped around her like a blanket one evening when the three of them had been in the car on their way back from the pictures.

She’d questioned her mother and Therese about her discovery that evening over dinner.

She’d thought Therese might pass out she’d turned such a brilliant shade of red. It had also been one of the nights she’d foregone dessert; punishment for snooping apparently. The few items belonging to Therese that had been in her room left shortly after that though, and the following month when she’d come to visit her mother and Therese had informed her they’d be spending the weekend decorating the room however she wanted. It was that weekend Therese had shown Rindy how to use a camera. Her mother had promised she could hang pictures in her new room of whatever pleased her and so she and Therese had spent an entire evening taking photos out on the street together.

It was then she realised that against perhaps even greater odds she loved Therese too.

Her grandmother said a lot worse about Therese than she dared say about Rindy’s mother, and her father had always openly hated Therese, even once telling Rindy it was Therese’s fault him and her mother were no longer married. He’d been drunk when he’d said that though, and the next day he’d made Rindy swear never to tell her mother he’d said it.

She never did.

Still though, Rindy had always quite liked Therese. She liked the way her mother smiled when Therese walked into a room, and the way Therese and her mothers’ laughter carried through her bedroom door at night when she should be sleeping. She also liked the way Therese always took her side when her mother told her they wouldn’t have time to go to the pictures, and the way Therese sometimes slid bits of her own dessert to Rindy when her mother was punishing her. It was that day, out on the street with the camera, Rindy realised she loved Therese though, and when they went back inside that evening and her mother wrapped her arm around Therese’s waist as they showed her the pictures they’d taken Rindy realised her mother loved Therese too.

In a different way of course.

In the way only adults could love one another, and in the way her mother and father should have loved one another but never really did. Rindy was glad they loved one another too. Even now at thirteen as she realised them loving one another was the reason she only got to see her mother once a month, she was glad they loved one another, because even if at thirteen you can’t be sure of many things, one thing Rindy was sure of was that she’d rather see her mother once a month with a smile on her face, than every day with a frown.


End file.
